Crossways (16 page)

*Are you all right?*
Ben asked.

*Apart from hardly believing what happened, yes, I think I am.*

*That's the other part of my theory you've proved, Kitty. Reality in the Folds is what we believe it to be.*

Kitty staggered and fell straight into the lap of the person in the command chair of the
Simonides
. She'd barely opened one eye and squinted at his name badge, Captain Duran, when she was seized from behind by someone much bigger and stronger than she was. She briefly considered struggling, but then added up what had just happened. She was on board the
Simonides
. How the hell had that happened? All she'd done was to think, for a moment, that the
Simonides
looked so real.

She relaxed into her captor without struggling. For the moment, play dumb. See how this worked out.

“What the hell . . .” Duran spat out. “Mulligan, hold her.” He turned to the Nav Station. “Casey, status.”

“We're in realspace, Captain. Benjamin did it.” The Navigator, female, fortyish, turned and grinned at him. “He did it.”

“Position?”

“Not sure. Give me . . . Oh, bastard. Sorry, Captain. Halfway to the Rim. Closest system gate is fifteen days away. Romanov Hub.”

Kitty saw Duran's jaw clench.

“Captain Duran?” Cara broadcast from
Solar Wind
.

Kitty listened to the exchange between Benjamin and Duran. She'd thought Benjamin a bit of a nut with his theories about foldspace, but now she wasn't so sure.

*Kitty?*
Cara sent that thought just for her.

Finally they'd missed her!

And now Benjamin was banging on about reality in the Folds. After what just happened, she barely knew what was real and what wasn't.

She'd think about Benjamin's theory later. In the meantime she needed to get back to
Solar Wind
.

Captain Duran was still blinking in disbelief. She gave her name and her Alphacorp ID twice before he took note of it. “Ensign Keely, I should engage
Solar Wind
, but the circumstances are somewhat unusual.”

“Don't go head-to-head with Benjamin, sir, you'd lose.
Solar Wind
has modifications.”

Not strictly true. She didn't actually know who'd win in a straight shoot-out, but she needed Benjamin in order to stay on the inside of what was happening on Olyanda. The platinum was more important than Benjamin and his psi-techs. Besides, she had to admit that they weren't actually guilty of most of the crimes they'd been charged with. If the psi-techs were guilty of anything it was making the most out of a rough deal.

“I know Benjamin,” she said. “He won't come out shooting unless you do. He could have left you in the Folds if he'd wanted you dead. Besides, could you even begin to write this up?”

He looked thoughtful.

“How about you just send me back and we don't complicate matters?”

The mechanical comm rattled into life.

“Well, now this is awkward,” Captain Duran said. “We appear to have one of your crew. I don't know how, and I don't want to know.”

“On screen,” Ben said, and the image of
Simonides'
bridge flickered and stabilized. Kitty stood just behind the captain with a tall corpsman obviously on guard.

Ben touched his vox. “What are your intentions, Duran?”

“I intend to get back to base as quickly as possible without recording an incident which will count against me next time I have a psych evaluation. As far as my log goes
Solar Wind
dragged us out of foldspace just like she dragged us in.”

“And Miss Keely?”

“Ensign Keely is an Alphacorp employee.”

“She is in our care. Check your records. There's no warrant out for her.”

“So I note, or she'd be in the brig already and we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

“Kitty, are you all right?” Ben asked.

“Yes, Boss.” Her voice sounded a little shaky. Not surprising under the circumstances.

“Do you want to stay with Captain Duran? He can get you back to Alphacorp safely. Right, Duran?”

“Uh, no,” Kitty said quickly. “I want to come home.”

“Understood. You heard her, Duran. Let's keep it simple. You tried to kill us, we stopped you, and you're still alive to tell the tale.”

“Fifteen days from the nearest hub.”

Ben's mouth twitched at the corners. “Fifteen days out of the rest of your life, and the lives of your crew. What do you say to a truce?”

“You always had a rep for being fair.”

“I'm surprised I have any kind of a rep.”

“Word gets around. The Hera-3 thing . . . Didn't figure you for a terrorist and a pirate, though, until we got the warrants.”

“It's a twisted world out there, Duran. Look who issued the warrants. Follow the money.”

“Anyhow. I want you to know that I'm not unappreciative.”

“Thanks—I think,” Ben said, “but forgive us if we try and stay far enough away that we never need to put your gratitude to the test.”

Duran laughed. “You can have Miss Keely back, but take care, Benjamin. If we ever meet again, come out fighting.”

“You can count on it.”

Kitty transferred on the
Simonides'
launch. They left Captain Duran and his crew in realspace. By the time they found their way back the situation on Olyanda would be resolved one way or another.

Ben fired up the jump drive and popped the
Solar Wind
through foldspace without incident, four hours from Crossways.

“Gwala,” Ben said. “Nice shooting back there. If you want to change outfits I've got a place for you on the flight crew.”

“I thought Tengue was a crazy sonofabitch, Benjamin, but right now he looks like my mother. Happy to take your coin and to fly with you again, though.” He gave the closed fist sign. “Respect!”

“And to you.”

S
OLAR WIND
DOCKED IN PORT 22 AGAIN. CARA hung back while sixty mercenaries staggered out of the hold with varying comments about the rough ride and the legitimacy of Ben Benjamin's birth. Ben booked a clean-up crew to hose down the space and left Gwala to tell Tengue why the ride had been, even by foldspace standards, more traumatic than usual.

Cara waited, torn between charging down to confront McLellan and hiding away in the cabin she shared with Ben. Finally she dithered for long enough that Ronan arranged for McLellan to be taken away to a secure facility.

*You can come out now,*
Ronan told her.
*Deal with McLellan another day.*

Grateful for the matter to be out of her hands, she followed Ben down to the dockside where he was making arrangements with Morton Tengue for his mercs to report to Blue Seven later in the day. Their wounded had already been shipped off to Dockside Medical, Fowler complaining every step of the way, but Cara noticed she paused to squeeze Ben's hand as the antigrav gurney carried her past. She also noticed the look on Tengue's face as he relinquished her to the med-techs.

Yan said he needed to get a thorough overhaul for the
Solar Wind
after Ben's little trick, and if they were going to resort to the jump drive every time out he needed to restock the platinum rods. So it was Ben, Cara, Ronan, and Kitty who shared a tub back to Blue Seven where Cara was looking forward to no more than a hot meal and a few hours' solid sleep.

“How the hell are we going to get any sleep in all this?” she said as they walked through the open doors into the vast warehouse. Her words were swallowed up by noise and a melee of mech-techs with a variety of worker bots drilling, cutting, riveting, sealing. The transformation was underway. Everything was happening at once. And the din . . . Cara switched on her noise cancellers, but that meant she couldn't hear Ben when he spoke, so she linked telepathically.

*I said, how are we going to get any sleep? I've a good mind to go back to the
Solar Wind
.*

*We'll manage, even if we have to sleep with our buddysuit helmets up and the noise cancellers on.*

She pulled a face.

On closer examination the chaos began to sort itself out into separate projects. In one section Archie Tatum was supervising the installation of medonite walls to create one- and two-room apartments while a team of his Psi-Mech engineers constructed an internal skin as an extra layer of security. Several staircases and a couple of antigrav tubes had already been installed, but at the moment they led to nowhere, as the mezzanine floor was nothing more than a series of major support struts bordering a double-height atrium that would prevent the whole place from being claustrophobic.

*Let's see what Wenna's got organized,*
Ben suggested.

They headed for the cluster of low boxlike structures that formed the basic administration block. Inside it was just a space divided up by a series of portable screens where people could carve out a small kingdom for themselves for as long as they needed it. Cara could tell from the way Wenna was talking to Gen and Max that the noise levels were benign, so she clicked off the noise cancelation on her buddysuit and her ears popped back into the real world.

“Boss?” Wenna's greeting was also a question.

“We've got the mercs. Gupta can start working with them this afternoon. Where is he?”

“Either babysitting or imprisoning Cara's visitor. We can't decide which.”

“Visitor? What visitor?” Cara had been about to drop into a spare chair, but she stood up again. “I'm not expecting anyone. Hell, I don't have anyone who'd want to visit me.” She swallowed hard. “It's not my mother, is it?” If her mother ever got a whiff of the platinum profits Cara had no doubt that she'd be on the doorstep as soon as she could detach herself from her lover of the month.

“No, not your mother, though that sounds like a story worth hearing just from the way you said it. This is a squat fellow with an eyebrow.” She zigzagged her finger across her forehead. “Just one eyebrow. Says he knows you from Mirrimar-14.”

“Jussaro?”

“That's the one.”

Cara laughed. “Where is he?”

Wenna pointed to the far end of the room where there were screens surrounding a space isolated with sound baffles.

“Cara!” Ben's sharp tone pulled her up. “Make sure it is Jussaro before you barge in there with your guard down.”

She nodded but noted he still followed her, though he stood back to let her enter the enclosure on her own.

It was unmistakably Jussaro, monobrow, purple-black skin, nictitating eyelids and all. Though heavily muscled, the top of his head barely reached Cara's nose, which made him tall for one of the natives of the two inhabited planets of the Hollands System, where gravity was twenty-five percent stronger than Earth-normal. The genetic adaptations protected him from the ravages of the harsh Hollands sun. Most of the Hollanders didn't travel far, but Jussaro wasn't most people.

“Jussaro!” Heedless of Gupta's two guards, she stepped forward and hugged him, planting a quick kiss on the top of his bald head. “What are you doing here?”

And then she thought about it. What was he doing here?

He'd been a Psi-1 Telepath before undergoing two sessions of Neural Readjustment and finally having his implant decommissioned for the crime of encouraging psi-techs to go rogue and abandon the megacorps that paid to have them implanted and trained.

“Long story. Glad I found the right place at last.”

She folded her arms and stepped back. “About that. How did you find us?”

Jussaro leaned back in his chair. “Got any caff, Carlinni? I always talk better when I'm caffeinated.”

Cara looked around. Gupta had set it up as a typical interview room with nothing but a table and a couple of chairs.

“I think we can manage some caff.”

“If you don't need me, I'll send some in,” Gupta said.

*Would you ask Ronan to bring it? I'd like him to hear this, too,*
Cara asked him on a very tight band so that Jussaro didn't hear.

Gupta gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Cara sat in one of the chairs, Ben lounged against one wall, saying nothing. Jussaro eyed him up warily and turned back to Cara. “It's a long story.”

“We've got time.”

“Okay.” Jussaro took a deep breath. “After you got away from Mirrimar-14 the line manager at Devantec called us all in—on our own time I might add—and started asking questions. There was a man with him who never said anything, just leaned against the wall and listened.” He looked at Ben again, but Ben never moved.

“They were real interested in me because of how close you and I worked and because of my history, but they couldn't prove any kind of connection and I was obviously not helping Telepaths go rogue anymore since I lost my implant. They figured out that I could still receive, because I still had some natural talent, but beyond that I couldn't throw a thought past the end of my nose.

“It was sweet when you contacted me, by the way. First time I'd felt normal in two years. I knew it was all you and not me, but it felt good.”

“I didn't put you in any danger?”

“No more than I was in already. They found a security recording of you in the access corridor to my accommodation sector on the night you hid out at my place. It was enough for them to come knocking on my door. Once they were in . . . well . . . you left a blonde hair on my chair, Carlinni.”

“Sorry. I really am sorry for dragging you into this.”

The door opened and Ronan brought in a tray with four mugs of caff. He placed it on the table and gave Jussaro a curious look.

“Will you stay?” Cara asked.

Ronan took a mug for himself and handed one to Ben, settling next to him against the wall.

Jussaro eyed Ronan, but said nothing about the extra observer. He took a sip of his caff, sighed and settled back in his chair.

“So what happened after they found my hair?” Cara took her own cup of caff.

“Turns out that the man in the interview room was van Blaiden's goon.”

Cara nodded. “Thought he might be. Was his name Craike?”

“That's the one. I got a first-class ticket to Sentier-4.”

Knowing Craike's propensity for violence, it hadn't been quite as straightforward as that.

“I'm so sorry.”

Jussaro shook his head. “No need. There's not much they can do to you if you've already lost your implant. Well, yeah, they can lock you up and throw away the key, but that's about it. I saw Donida McLellan once and before she could start anything I voluntarily told her everything that happened the night you came to visit and about you contacting me. By that time it was old news anyway.”

“McLellan's here.”

“What?”

“Not quite her old self. Long story.” Cara swallowed the rising queasiness in the back of her throat. “Go on. Is that it?”

“Apart from a lot of staring at the walls. McLellan left me alone and I never saw Craike again.”

“So how did you get out?”

“That's the interesting bit. I lost track of time.” He held up his hand. “This is a new handpad; they ripped off my old one. Months later—maybe more than months—I was transferred. I didn't know where I was being taken or why. I thought they might lose me on a prison planet or just shove me out of the air lock. Turns out it was to the Trust.”

“How did that happen?”

“I really have no idea. Anyhow, I saw a very nice lady called Dr. Zuma who said I was a suitable subject for reimplantation.”

“Reimplantation? Why would they do that?”

“So that Crowder could let me escape, or appear to, and I could find you and spy on you for him, of course.”

Cara heard Ben mutter a soft curse, but he didn't interrupt.

“Did you agree?” she asked Jussaro.

“Wouldn't you?”

She shrugged.

“You know van Blaiden is dead?” Ben spoke up for the first time.

“So I've been told,” Jussaro said. “And Craike, too, I understand. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving pair. Sadly I report to a Telepath called Leyburn and he's not dead.”

“You're admitting to being a Trust spy?” Ben said.

“I'm admitting to not only being a spy, but continuing to be a spy. Unless I report once a week . . .” He drew his finger across his throat. “My implant is fitted with a kill switch.”

“And you're telling us all this because . . . ?” Ben wasn't lounging against the wall now. He was on his feet and looking as though he was about to come at Jussaro hard and fast.

Ronan hadn't moved.

Cara waved her hand at Ben and turned to Jussaro. “I get it. A spy is only dangerous if you don't know he's there.”

Jussaro raised one eyebrow, not an inconsiderable feat with brows like his. “And you're not stupid, you're going to have me repeat all this in front of the best Empath you've got to determine if I'm lying.” He looked at Ronan, who nodded.

“Damn right,” Ben said.

“But, wait . . . you said kill switch?” Cara leaned forward in her chair.

“Yeah, that's the kicker.” He grimaced. “Given that all my old contacts are either dead or have gone to ground, there's no place I'd rather be than here. . . . In any other circumstances than these, that is. The implant in my brain will kill me, maybe not now, but one day. Crowder says it's tamper-proof. Try to disengage or adjust it and it will blow, with messy results, a meltdown cascading through my
neural pathways like a stroke. Crowder can trigger it at any time, from any distance, deliberately or by omission. If I don't contact Crowder's Telepath at least once a week I'm toast.”

He shrugged. “I might keep Crowder happy in the short-term, but in the long-term it's an unsustainable arrangement. Sure, I can warn Crowder if you're sending any kind of attack against him, but what happens when I've served my purpose? Will Crowder keep me around? Unlikely. I know too much. Besides, Crowder doesn't look like a well man. Too much stress, not enough exercise, not enough sleep. What happens if he dies of natural causes? He's at least a quarter century older than me and doesn't look like the sort of man who'll make it to a well-deserved retirement.”

“You think Crowder won't have thought this through?” Ben said.

“Oh, I'm sure he will have, but as far as he's concerned I have two choices. I can either trust you, as I am doing, or hide what I am and try to stay alive. And Crowder's not big on trust himself. In my position what would he do? Either way, if I don't send back information he can just write me off as a failed experiment. I don't like playing the spy, but I'm not sorry to have my implant back and I'm not sorry to be here. Give me time. I'll find some way to screw Crowder over if it kills me.” He exhaled sharply. “It might, of course.”